Volunteer are not just precious they are the essential component both
during planning and during the event itself, also with that goes the desire
to put that effort in. WMF Staff, Affiliate Staff and Contractors while
necessary are paid its something that can be augmented as needed but not
volunteers, that means also consideration of the energy within a community
to host the event.
We should be expecting a real professional approach from those paid to make
this happen, for the WMF to hire skill conference people to do that work,
its these skilled people that ensure the processes reflect needs, improve
the outcomes and critically builds on established successes. By the time
Montreal opens, 2018 should be signed sealed and ready to go with 2019
being finalised, venues booked and contracts on the table.
after 10 years the basic frame work is there, there are common things and
physical needs that occur every Wikimania;
- Venue capacity
- 1000-2500 seat auditorium - open & close, key talks
- 4 larger theatre type rooms - specific talks
- 6-10 smaller rooms - discussion and minor talks
- larger communal area, WikiVillage, meal area and general open space
to congregate
- WiFi capacity
- Venue location(within City)
- central with good access
- close to accommodation(or good connectioning services)
- Scholarships
- 100-200 people
- full vs partial
- visa needs
- City
- International Airport with sufficient connections (In USA, EU rail
connection)
- sufficient accommodation
even the basic give away gumf (bag t shirts, usb stickers, pins, pens) are
kind of consistent they just change to suit the logo. The registration is
the same, media passes, speakers passes. The WMF could even go into longer
term sponsorship for the event, there would also some legal and contractual
issue that the WMF would be better suited to manage, WMF employees would
chair/co-chair the associated committees
The locals focus on
- Theme
- catering
- volunteers on site
- meet & greet at transport hubs
- local media
- local sponsorship
- external activities
On 17 July 2016 at 14:31, Pine W <wiki.pine(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Another committee to add to Chris' list is the
Scholarship Committee.
I'd be interested in knowing the number of volunteer, contractor, and WMF
and affiliate staff hours that are involved in Wikimania from start to
finish, and having some thoughtful consideration of ways to increase
efficiency as well as effectiveness and alignment. I believe that
Christophe is thinking along these lines for WMF staff time; I would
suggest including affiliate staff, contractor, and volunteer time in the
list of considerations. I consider volunteer time to be particularly
precious.
Pine
On Jul 16, 2016 11:23, "Chris Keating" <chriskeatingwiki(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
Well this thread turned out bigger (and much more
productive) than I
expected!
To my mind, Wikimania continuing to happen every year is a minor miracle,
and one that's only possible with the hard work and dedication of lots of
people.
However, it's a miracle that isn't without its problems. The most obvious
problem to my mind is that there is a very mixed quality of actual
conference programme, and without clear objectives (or at least not
consistent objectives). The Wikimedia Conference, by contrast, has a much
clearer alignment of the programme with a set of goals, and work happens to
follow up before and after the conference.
The second problem is that the responsibilities for governance and
management of the conference are really very unclear. We have the Wikimania
Committee, we have the local team (and in some cases a local chapter who
may or may not be working closely with the bid team), we have the Programme
Committee and we have the WMF. (Actually we have the WMF at least twice, as
the priorities of the WMF team involved in organising the conference don't
always seem to align with those of the rest of the organisation).
In my view, the most useful thing for all these groups to do is to work
out who is actually responsible for what, and document it, in public.
Chris
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